


Fear And Loathing In Los Angeles; Or, When did Lucifer forgive Chloe?

by CJ_R



Series: Essays [4]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 19:28:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CJ_R/pseuds/CJ_R
Summary: An essay exploring the process of forgiveness and acceptance throughout season four ofLucifer





	Fear And Loathing In Los Angeles; Or, When did Lucifer forgive Chloe?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This essay originally appeared on my Tumblr page under the same title. I'm putting it up here on AO3 for archival purposes. There have been some minor edits for clarity. Please enjoy!

So, something that’s been sticking with me are questions that I’ve seen popping up around Tumblr looking for clarification about Chloe conspiring with Kinley and whether Lucifer has (or even should) forgive her.

Spoiler alert, if you’ve watched Season 4 the answer is yes, Lucifer has forgiven Chloe. However, I think there’s actually something to the argument that he doesn’t fully forgive her until the climax of 4x10. After all, Lucifer continues to throw Kinley in Chloe’s face multiple times throughout the back half of the season. That’s not dialogue of someone who’s completely forgiven the other person.

Others have pointed out that the whole point of 4x05 is to bring Chloe and Lucifer back together as partners and they’re absolutely right - there is a certain amount of forgiveness that happens within that episode.

The big question is; what exactly has Lucifer forgiven and when?  


**The Plot To Send Lucifer To Hell**

Chloe’s betrayal of Lucifer is actually _not_ her working with Kinley to send him back to hell. The fact that she doesn’t actually go through with the plan to drug him is irrelevant to the hurt that she causes. But, because it’s the physical action that represents her betrayal, it’s easy for the audience (and Chloe herself) to try to backpedal and say that she almost betrayed Lucifer, but in the end, she trusted her own judgment and put a stop to it.

There’s no doubt that Lucifer is hurt by the plan to send him back to the one place he’s spent so much effort to escape forever, but Kinley’s plan exposes the real betrayal - the fact that Chloe is terrified of him. Worse - that she pretended not to be and lied to him that she had processed seeing his Devil face and that “what I saw was my partner.” 

She gave him hope and then that hope was revealed to be a lie. 

Watch Lucifer’s face and body language after Chloe screams the line, “Because I’m terrified!” Before that he’s hurt, he’s angry, but he’s facing her and prepared to have this fight out. He’s willing to fight for their relationship until this moment. But that line is the betrayal. Because the poison that’s been introduced is fear - and that can’t be removed as easily as Kinley’s vial. 

That’s the moment he turns his back, unable to look at her except to finally confront her once more with incontrovertible proof of his identity after she tries to deny _to him_ that he is the Devil. Cain’s words must be ringing in his ears at this moment. “Neither can you.” He’s been running from the Devil ever since his Fall.

But he can’t escape who he is, and the fact of the matter is that his past glee in “sowing chaos and destruction for his own amusement,” has grown into every awful story that has terrified Chloe – with good reason. Indeed, arguably the most famous of those seeds is going to show up in the final scene of 4x03, when Eve steps into LUX. 

**Apologies**

Ella puts her finger on Lucifer’s pain in 4x05 - that idea that Chloe doesn’t care about him anymore. After all, she certainly wasn’t acting like she cared in front of him in 4x04 - she flat out told him she didn’t actually need him, she used his help and then left him without the necklace he needed to fulfill his end of the deal. From his perspective, it must feel like she only wants him back to work when she needs something, like one of his vintage cars.

When Marco bursts into LUX, demanding to be given a chance to apologize to his ex-wife it is, as always with the procedural elements, symbolic for the apology that Chloe owes Lucifer. When Leona comes in and apologizes to Marco for ghosting him, it’s powerful - until the apology is proven false. Chloe is confronted with a mirror in the form of Leona, using what Marco desperately wanted to hear as a distraction to get close enough to kill him. And Chloe doesn’t much like what she sees.

Her apology in the famous ax scene of 4x02 is important for her (and her realization that Kinley is wrong), but it doesn’t actually address the hurt that she caused because Lucifer had no idea what she was actually apologizing for. The act of throwing herself between Lucifer and the anticipated explosion serves the purpose, even as she ostensibly says “I’m sorry” for hurting him by landing on top of his wound.

Through the show we’ve seen Lucifer literally die for Chloe - this is the first time that she actively proves to him that she would do the same for him, without hesitation, since knowing exactly who and what he is. It’s the ax scene in reverse. Ella’s lines echo in parallel to Lucifer’s declaration;

“You two care about each other so much! What do you need her to do, take a bullet for you?”

“And I would do it again. And again. Don’t you know that, Detective?”

The core of their relationship may be a raw, exposed nerve right now, but it’s still there and intact. Having proof that she still cares that deeply is enough that Lucifer can forgive her for her direct actions in response to her terror - actively considering hurting him and lying to him.

But that amount of forgiveness is only enough to rescue their partnership. The true betrayal – her fear - remains.

**Diet Devil**

The second half of the season opens with Lucifer tearing himself in two in order to keep Chloe from being frightened. 

Eve is absolutely right when she points out that Lucifer has been holding himself back, just mistaken about his motives. She conflates the self-restraint Lucifer has learned with his simmering resentment at Chloe only being able to accept the pieces of him that she views as “good” - resentment that finally spills over when Lucifer confesses to Chloe that he’s the one who broke Julian’s back. 

Lucifer has spent months being patient, careful, considerate and feels like he’s barely treading water. In 4x07 he confronts her with the Devil at his coldest and most cutting, not caring anymore whether he scares her. He dares her to reject him again so he can finally snap the tension and drown his pain and self-loathing in the Devil that Eve is encouraging him to be. 

This moment is the turning point for Chloe. This is the moment that she sees Lucifer at his absolute worst - wrathful, vengeful, seemingly proud of what he’s done and absolutely daring her to criticize him for it.

Instead of crumbling against his resentment and anger the way she would have at the beginning of the season, she stands her ground. Lucifer is the one who flees back to his penthouse with Eve to “plan” Tiernan’s punishment, already stalling in the face of Chloe’s disappointment in him.

Chloe Decker, a “nobody,” holds the Devil to account with no power except her faith in Lucifer’s conscience. 

By the end of the episode, her faith is justified - and she’s finally capable of confronting Kinley on her own, no longer frightened and lost, but secure in her faith that Lucifer is a good man - which she throws in Kinley’s face. 

Once again, Kinley attempts to use fear to bring Chloe back into line by telling her about the prophecy, appealing to her best instincts to protect others, the corner of his mouth twitching in an aborted smile when he sees her respond to “Lucifer’s first love,” knowing that he’s succeeded in frightening her.

Except this time Chloe goes straight to Lucifer to confide in him.

Lucifer himself doesn’t quite appreciate this at the time because seeing her afraid at all rubs him the wrong way, as does the fact that she tells him about going to see Kinley after the fact. His own fear swamps him, encouraging him to be sarcastic and her throw her complicity in the plan to send him to Hell in her face as a visceral way to remind her not to trust Kinley. While he’s forgiven her actions, Kinley himself has become a symbol of Chloe’s fear of him, which he has not yet forgiven.

In fact, I’d argue that it’s not possible for him to forgive Chloe yet because the offense is ongoing. We the audience can see that she IS conquering her fear and re-learning who her partner is from the ground up – every part of him this time. But acceptance is an ongoing process and Lucifer is far from objective on the subject. 

**Where Is My Beast?**

If 4x07 is where Chloe sees Lucifer at his worst, 4x09 is when she confronts the monster. As each individual piece of Lucifer transforms, Chloe handles it, not with perfect calm, but by confronting and conquering her fear to focus on helping Lucifer – and proving that she does know exactly who Lucifer is, responding to the question that was put to her in the previous episode with actions, not words.

At no point does she kick him off the case, despite him falling into his usual pattern of projecting his issues onto it or the fact that his transformation is becoming increasingly difficult to hide.

Instead of letting him brood in his penthouse, she arranges a masquerade party for the sting so that Lucifer can go downstairs masked when his Devil face inevitably pops out because she knows just how social Lucifer is and that being alone will only make him spiral down faster.

When he loses control of his mojo and the masquerade at LUX turns into a nightmare, Chloe is there to take control, shepherding Lucifer to safety while also having the presence of mind to keep her ear to the ground for the case and asking the question “Why did you desire...” when Lucifer is unable to make eye contact.

When Beth verbalizes Lucifer’s own self-hatred, his Devil face is fully out - and while he walks behind Beth’s back, Chloe watches him without a hint of fear - only concern. 

The full transformation DOES shock her, and she has trouble looking at him - and that’s by design. His full transformation is designed to shock and terrify anyone who looks at him, _including demons_. The camera is very careful to watch Chloe’s face when Lucifer steps out, fully transformed. We see her eyes widen in horror and she takes a step back before looking away (echoing the initial fight in 4x03), before focusing on how she deliberately looks back at Lucifer when he says “I’m poison to anyone who dares to care about me. And especially you.” 

This is where the traditional Beauty and the Beast recognition of the man and the beast being the same person has been shuffled and flipped on its head. Chloe’s been struggling to reconcile what has felt to her like the two opposite sides of Lucifer’s personality – the good man (angel) that she knows and the monster (Devil) that is lurking underneath. This is the moment that the two sides merge for her – when she realizes that the beast is a manifestation of Lucifer’s declared self-hatred. 

What does she do? The exact opposite of running away. She goes after Lucifer. She’s able to use her own journey to acceptance to help him start down the path of his own. This is the first moment they both begin to reap the fruit of the season’s emotional labor. Lucifer’s revelation that he doesn’t want to be trapped in this destructive cycle anymore allows the Beast to melt away, revealing the man underneath to Chloe and finally allowing Lucifer full control over his body.

**The Vial Reappears**

The pure joy that Lucifer exhibits in the beginning of 4x10 is just as much about Chloe having demonstrated that she won’t run away from the monster as it is his overly optimistic hope that wanting to forgive himself is the same thing as actually doing it. Which is why he’s so startled when he seems to run smack into the exact same issues with Chloe that’s been plaguing them all season – and in response, backslides.

Chloe seems to care enough to face her fear of the monster, but Lucifer can’t bear her pulling away in the aftermath. So, he promises her that she’ll “never have to see anything monstrous ever again.” He shoots down her idea to bring Dan and Ella into the loop because of how long it takes to recover (or not recover) from that kind of revelation, making it utterly clear to Chloe that he believes that he’s damaged her permanently.

Meanwhile, Chloe’s had a better bead on the threat that Hell represents since she heard Kinley’s prophecy. Where Lucifer used the prophecy as an excuse to break up with Eve, Chloe has put the pieces together and recognized that if;

a.) The Devil is a good man and   
b.) demons could potentially roam the earth then,   
c.) what logically follows is that the Devil would have to do something about it.

The Devil is no longer a threat because he’s a monster. The Devil is a threat because it’s the title of the responsibilities that could take Lucifer away from her.

Of course, Chloe is terrible at articulating all of this. No one can blame Lucifer for interpreting the scene at the penthouse as Chloe’s fear of him once again coming to the forefront, even as she tries to backtrack and say what she actually means. In trying to protect him, she’s ripped open the old wound.

Once again, she’s been keeping something important from him, working on her own instead of with him as her partner and, _once again,_ Kinley is the cause.

At this point, Lucifer’s had it. Even in expressing his irritation there’s fatigue and resignation - he’s given up and accepted that Chloe doesn’t want to handle the monster and that she shouldn’t be forced to do so just to satisfy his own need for acceptance.

The fact that Lucifer has kept Kinley’s vial hidden in his safe all this time is symbolic of the fact that he hasn’t finished letting any of this go yet. He’s got a perfectly good explanation for why he had it, but it’s a kernel of poison hidden deep within the heart of his home. A hidden reminder to him that even the person he loves most could turn on him. And, just as symbolically, it’s ripped out of his home by force.

Kinley’s plot to send Lucifer back to Hell has come full circle and now threatens a baby – the definition of an innocent victim. There’s no more avoiding the subject; Lucifer needs to know exactly what the full plan was to send him to Hell and how he phrases it is interesting – his tone is accusing, but he uses the past tense. “Back when you wanted me in Hell?”

This is the first time Chloe defends herself. “Well, as you know, I didn’t go through with it.” Pointing out to him that by the time he found out about the plot, she had already abandoned it, recognizing that she was wrong.

It doesn’t really buy her any quarter, now does it? The expression on Lucifer’s face never changes because the roofie was never the real issue. But, with the vial gone, he’s able to acknowledge that the incident is in the past and confront it head on with Chloe to save Charlie.

**Forgiveness And Acceptance**

It’s not until Chloe abandons all thought of common sense or good timing, going in to check on Lucifer (despite him telling her explicitly to say outside), with the two symbols of her fear literally behind them – the vial on the altar and what’s left of Kinley – that they come full circle.

“I don’t want you to see me like this. I know it scares you.” His voice is harsh, still shaking with battle adrenaline and terror, his body language braced for rejection. 

Finally, Chloe is able to spit the truth out - and is immediately called on to prove it. The actual monsters are swarming them and the only thing that can save them all is an even bigger monster. This isn’t Lucifer transformed in the penthouse, where he’s doing his very best to not threaten her, his voice still perfectly familiar and dripping with self-loathing.

This is the first time Chloe sees Lucifer as the King of Hell in the moment he reclaims the title.

His wings are outstretched to intimidate, his voice booms with the power to instantly command his subjects to kneel leaving him completely unrecognizable. He can’t afford to focus on her in that moment, but the camera can.

She’s NOT calm. Her eyes are wide, she’s gasping slightly and she’s trembling. But she does not look away – her eyes stay RIGHT on him until she sees the demons obey and she glances around as they fall. Then she looks back and she sees Lucifer, staring at her, his heart in his throat.

This time the question, “Can you accept me like this?” is silent. And so is her answer – her mouth closes, she stands up straight and she smiles at him.

She’s proud of him in that moment. And her pride in him reinforces his own pride. That tiny nod he gives Chloe at the end, when she’s not just declared that her fear is gone but proved it? That’s the moment Lucifer forgives her entirely. Because that’s the moment she’s made the only restitution Lucifer would accept – her own acceptance of him.

**So, Your Point?**

Forgiveness and acceptance are major themes of Season 4 and they’re not easy to achieve, nor can they happen in a single moment. One of Lucifer’s biggest mistakes of the season (as much as it can be called one, given the situation) is trying to force the issue of his identity with Chloe at the end of 4x03.  Forgiveness requires not only the recognition of wrongdoing, but also action to be taken to address the cause of the offense. It is an active process, not a passive gift that can simply be given out as a reward for good behavior.  Acceptance, like forgiveness, is also an active process that can’t be rushed. 

Neither Chloe nor Lucifer receive the rewards of their emotional labor until the very end, when they have both forgiven and accepted each other as they are. Lucifer finally receives Chloe’s love and Chloe finally sees Lucifer’s angel wings. It’s bittersweet, but earned.


End file.
